TY - JOUR
T1 - The relationship between women’s empowerment and household food and nutrition security in Pakistan
AU - Ishfaq, Sidra
AU - Anjum, Abedullah
AU - Kouser, Shahzad
AU - Nightingale, Glenna
AU - Jepson, Ruth
N1 - Funding Information:
This research paper is from a Ph.D. dissertation, funded by Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, under the scheme International Research Support Initiative Program (IRSIP). The authors appreciate their financial support in enabling Sidra Ishfaq to spend time at the University of Edinburgh. Author: Sidra Ishfaq URL:https://www.hec.gov.pk/english/ scholarshipsgrants/IRSIP/Pages/default.aspx Grant Number: 1-8/HEC/HRD/2020/10677 The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors thank Shabana Kishwar, Imran Nazir, Ali Sher, Azka Rehman, Tayyaba Hina and Mehran Hussain for their help, support, and guidance in organizing the research work. Authors are also thankful to International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for providing open access rich datasets employed in this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Ishfaq et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022/10/20
Y1 - 2022/10/20
N2 - Women’s empowerment is considered to play a crucial role in food and nutrition security. We aimed to explore the relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security, in rural Pakistan. Methods: To estimate women’s empowerment, we developed a Rural Women Composite Empowerment Index incorporating nine domains. For indicators of food and nutritional data we used data of 1879 rural households from Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey (PRHPS). Food insecurity was measured through a caloric intake approach; nutrition insecurity was measured through recommended nutrient intake (RNI). Using the Rural Women’s Composite Empowerment Index (RWCEI), we employed multi-level mixed-effect regression analysis. Results: The domains of traveling safely (21%), time allocated to tasks (20%), and (lack of) domestic violence (19%) were the most significant domains in defining empowerment of rural woman. The prevalence of food and nutrition insecurity were 33% and 50% respectively. Regression analysis found a positive and significant relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security–the proportion of household who were food and nutritionally secure in empowered households was 70% and 98% respectively. Conclusions: Developing programmes and policies to improve the range of domains of women’s empowerment requires a focussed policy agenda, bringing together policy makers from a number of different sectors including education, economy, communications, technology and agriculture. Women’s empowerment has the potential to make positive changes not only in food and nutrition security, but in all aspects of family health and wellbeing.
AB - Women’s empowerment is considered to play a crucial role in food and nutrition security. We aimed to explore the relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security, in rural Pakistan. Methods: To estimate women’s empowerment, we developed a Rural Women Composite Empowerment Index incorporating nine domains. For indicators of food and nutritional data we used data of 1879 rural households from Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey (PRHPS). Food insecurity was measured through a caloric intake approach; nutrition insecurity was measured through recommended nutrient intake (RNI). Using the Rural Women’s Composite Empowerment Index (RWCEI), we employed multi-level mixed-effect regression analysis. Results: The domains of traveling safely (21%), time allocated to tasks (20%), and (lack of) domestic violence (19%) were the most significant domains in defining empowerment of rural woman. The prevalence of food and nutrition insecurity were 33% and 50% respectively. Regression analysis found a positive and significant relationship between women’s empowerment and food and nutrition security–the proportion of household who were food and nutritionally secure in empowered households was 70% and 98% respectively. Conclusions: Developing programmes and policies to improve the range of domains of women’s empowerment requires a focussed policy agenda, bringing together policy makers from a number of different sectors including education, economy, communications, technology and agriculture. Women’s empowerment has the potential to make positive changes not only in food and nutrition security, but in all aspects of family health and wellbeing.
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0275713
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0275713
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 17
SP - 1
EP - 19
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 10
ER -